Seeing that it’s co-written by Tina Fey, I had a feeling it’d be great. But I underestimated how wonderful, funny, smart, silly, and simultaneously uplifting it would be. You see, Kimmy was part of a cult for 15 years and spent that time in an underground bunker with her sister-wives. Then one day she was freed by the authorities, and despite being completely out of touch with modern living, she joined the world.

Does she have issues and some life turbulence? Oh yeah. But remarkably, she never uses her past and what happened to her as an excuse. Instead, she moves to New York City and decides to find her own path no matter what.

I couldn’t help but think of my fundamentally awesome wife, who is her own version of unbreakable.

My wife is an amazing person. And while Kimmy climbs out of a literal hole to rejoin the world, my wife constantly has to scratch and claw her way out of the metaphorical hole of mental illness and depression. When MJ could no longer work as a bank manager due to her condition, I feared for the worst. Here was a workaholic, Type A, career-driven woman who suddenly finds herself unable to work, saddled with depression, and a baby to take care of while I was working my job.

But just like Kimmy Schmidt, MJ reinvented herself.

She didn’t have much of a plan and the odds were against her, but with persistence she did it. And just like Kimmy, she had help from a few friends (Tituss, Jacqueline, and Lillian are hysterical in the show). My wife found her way as a TERRIFIC stay-at-home mom. It’s not a role she envisioned for herself early on, but she rolled with the punches and eventually found what makes her happy.

You can continue to watch our lives unfold here on this blog, but visit Netflix to enjoy watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and get inspired to reinvent yourself as well.

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If your little ones want to be similarly inspired, check out these great movies on Netflix.

I was compensated by Netflix for writing this post. Although I did not receive monetary compensation, I received free Netflix for a year and an iPad Mini. However, as always, my opinions are 100% my own. Check out Netflix on Facebook.

Not only am I allergic to them, I just can’t stand them. They’re elitist, holier-than-thou feline devils who only want to give and receive affection on their terms. My wife had three cats when I met her, and I was in hell. One of them routinely pooped in my shoe. And naturally, despite wanting to be left alone, they would proceed to climb on top of me during the night as I slept. My wife told me it was them showing their love for me. I maintain they were trying to drape themselves around my neck and kill me in my sleep.

We still had two of the cats when Will was born, but had to get rid of them when we moved. And as much as I loathed them, I was sad for him. So imagine the joy he felt when I told him I had found a cat we could have in the house that both of us liked.

Netflix Originals has just come out with The Adventures of Puss in Boots, an animated series that expands on the popular and lovable kitty with huge eyes featured in Shrek and the Puss in Boots movie. The swashbuckling smart-alec cat is back and embarking on a bunch of zany adventures that my 6-year-old laps up like milk. Your kids will love it too.

But if you really hate cats that much (and I don’t blame you), Netflix has some great stuff for dog lovers too.

And if you’re an adult looking for some great pet-themed content, Netflix has you covered there too. Feel free to eat your four-legged loving heart out with these awesome movies and shows.

So whether you align with soulless kitty cats or loyal and honorable dogs, jump on over to Netflix and start enjoying some great original programming and terrific shows and movies they have.

I was compensated by Netflix for writing this post. Although I did not receive monetary compensation, I received free Netflix for a year and an iPad Mini. However, as always, my opinions are 100% my own. Check out Netflix on Facebook.

As parents, we’re very into milestones. Unfortunately, not all milestones are positive ones.

Earlier this month, I received my monthly cable TV bill from Comcast (or Xfinity or whatever the hell they call themselves now), and something in me just snapped. It was $215 for wireless Internet, a cable TV package, and a landline — part of their Triple Play package. It had been much less in the beginning, but just kept creeping up and up and up until it became another car payment.

I’m partly to blame (and by partly I mean mostly) for this, as I’m an unmitigated TV nut. I have it on constantly, even when I’m not watching it. But usually I am watching it. Everything from news to sports to movies to sitcoms — you name it, I watch it.

But even a TV freak like me has limits, and $215 was mine.

When I stepped back and took an objective look, I realized a few things. First of all, there is absolutely no earthly reason to keep a landline. Second, yes we watch a lot of TV. But most of it wasn’t cable.

I realized we almost exclusively use Netflix when we watch TV. For $8.99 a month (plus the one-time $35 cost for a Chromecast to stream it to my TV in HD glory), we get thousands of movies, TV shows, and documentaries that keep us and our kids completely entertained. And while we do supplement it with a few other free and paid services, Netflix is the one we use the most by far.

Will, my 6-year-old, easily logs in to Netflix and chooses from his favorite titles we have set up for him. Things like:

The Oscar’s Oasis one is especially wacky, and we would’ve never found it had we not been tooling around on Netflix looking for new stuff. Now it’s his favorite thing to watch.

But make no mistake, Netflix is hardly for kids. In fact, I’m pretty addicted to a whole bunch of shows including the following:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every month Netflix swaps out new movies and shows, and you’ll never lack for things to watch. Not to mention you’ll be paying as little as $8.99 to do it instead of hundreds of dollars. If you’re OK with harnessing the power of Netflix, then you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Even though you don’t want to completely cut the cord, you need to pretend you’re willing to do so when you call the cable company.

Most of their lower cost, special offers are for new customers. If that’s you, great. If not, you need to do a little wheeling and dealing. Telling them you’re planning to leave altogether usually does the trick and lo and behold, suddenly they’ll come up with some new offer they just started running in the last 12 seconds that includes you. Hooray. If that doesn’t work, don’t worry because you still have alternatives.

When Comcast wouldn’t offer us anything better, we simply ended my time as a customer there. And then we immediately began an account in my wife’s name with some downgrades. We gave up DVR and some of the premium channels, but kept HBO and Showtime. And by doing that, we were able to keep a lot of what we had but pay way, way less for it.

How much less? We reduced our monthly cable bill by $105 a month! I don’t know about you, but that makes a significant difference to my family. It can for you as well. Good luck!

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I’m happy to announce I’m now part of the Netflix Stream Team. Although I’m not receiving monetary compensation for my work, I have received free products and services. However, I’ve been using Netflix for years and my opinion, as always, is 100% my own.

Not to be outdone by his little brother’s hospital stay earlier this month, Will decided it was time for him to spike a fever and give us a scare. But I quickly learned there is one thing more daunting than a 104.3-degree fever — entertaining a 5-year-old who is bored and trapped inside the house.

This is tricky business. You can’t go anywhere because he’s sick and you have to limit contact with other people. You can’t take him outside because it’s New England in winter and it’s FREEZING. It also doesn’t help that Will was so tired and his energy so depleted by this 4-day fever, that he really couldn’t be on his feet for very long before he’d start fading. Yet when he sat back on the couch he’d utter the all too familiar hue and cry of kids the world over — “DAAAAAAD, I’M BORED!”

So what do you do? If you’re me, you sit that kid in front of the TV all day!

The one thing that is crystal clear to me in the wake of this whole Duck Dynasty flap (flap…ducks…get it??) is some people in this country have a completely misguided view of the First Amendment.

If you haven’t heard yet, Phil Robertson – patriarch of A&E’s Duck Dynasty show – was quoted in GQ saying some not-so-flattering things about homosexuality. That Robertson feels this way is unsurprising, given that he’s a 67-year-old camo-clad uber Christian from the backwaters of Louisiana. He called being gay an illogical sin — a sentiment I completely disagree with but frankly, I’ve heard far worse.

But he wasn’t content to just stop there. When asked what, specifically, he considers sinful, Robertson said:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Got that? According to Robertson, if you start with a gay person the next logical step in the sin spiral is fornicating with an animal. Because those two things obviously go hand in hand and certainly should be mentioned in the same breath as one another.

Also, just for good measure, Robertson implies that African-Americans living in 1960s Louisiana were happier before all that pesky Civil Rights nonsense brought them legal rights and basic equality.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Oh boy. Yikes.

The backlash from GLAAD was swift and justifiably upset. Then, as expected, came the corresponding backlash from the backlash courtesy of the Tea Party conservative Christian right, who hailed Robertson as a folk hero being criticized simply for spreading God’s message.

Honestly, I thought it would be a non-issue for A&E simply because Duck Dynasty draws 14 million viewers and is a cash cow to the network. I figured it would be a slap on the wrist for Robertson and then back to business. But late last night, A&E issued a statement condemning the star’s remarks and suspending him indefinitely from the show.